


What We Did Yesterday

by twobirdsonesong



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drabble, I never know what I'm doing you guys, Implied Relationships, M/M, Off-screen Relationship(s), Prompt Fill, Time Skips, crisscolfer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a rhythm Darren has never gotten used to, the way Chris is on and off with him so quickly, so sharply.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Did Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> anon prompt: "Oops I did it again". doesn't matter which one is doing it. angsty pleeeeeeease. Ending whether happy or not is up to you ^_^ thanks and I love you (even if you don't write it :P) <3 <3

It’s a rhythm Darren has never gotten used to, the way Chris is on and off with him so quickly, so sharply.

  
Meeting Chris is wrapped up in the whirlwind of landing a new, much needed job and Darren lets himself fall into it all faster than he should, caught up in the speed of a river he didn’t even know was flowing.  And maybe Darren should have taken a moment to step back and really look at what was going on, maybe he should have kept Chris at a spare distance to begin with while he got his balance in this new world. But he didn’t.

 

He took Chris out that night and showed him the town and did not go to sleep at all when maybe he should have gone home straight from set and let things be. But instead he let Chris’ young eyes and big hands and the joy and insanity of the moment they were beginning pull them inexorably together despite the surging, hidden need to keep them apart.

 

But Chris’ moods are insidious, his needs unfixed, and it took Darren too long to realize that he was not the one leading this dance, that it wasn’t a dance at all but a maelstrom.

 

And then he’s drowning.

 

***

 

It’s a date, Darren thinks, when Chris asks him to be his plus one to some fancy gala. Why would he think otherwise? They’re dressed in nice suits, arriving in the same car, and Darren tells the world how proud he is. Because the truth is something he holds dear, even when the truth is less than obvious.  He doesn’t yet know that there are words he cannot say and places he should not be.

 

Chris whispers jokes to him all night, fingers brushing his leg under the table, and Darren doesn’t even remember if any of the other cast were there or not. He doesn’t hardly know them besides.  And he doesn’t hold Chris’ hand because even if what he knows of the ways of this world isn’t much, he still knows that.

 

But Chris kisses him goodnight and then comes inside and if that’s not a date Darren doesn’t know what is.

 

He doesn’t know what it is at all.

 

***

 

That summer is what it is and no one can take it away from Darren.  There are no questions and there is no confusion, not from him, and he thinks not from Chris.  The road is easy and the nights are long.  It’s a life Darren never knew he was meant for with a man he’s pretty sure he is.

 

He does not expect something so good, so easy to end.

 

But it does.

 

***

 

At the end of the year there is a party that will become annual and even if Chris and Darren don’t show up together like they did before, they’re still there together. Darren finds some quiet space, hidden away, and Chris finds him there almost immediately.  The show goes on as it must and they do too.

 

Darren thinks the next year will be just fine if it can be like this.

 

***

 

But it’s not.  He loses Chris somewhere in the middle, somewhere in time between one clock stroke and the next.  He doesn’t see it coming, even though he should.  Chris is there and then he’s not and if Darren thinks about it, really stops and thinks about it, it’s probably always been this way, but he’s been too struck to see it for what it is.

 

Darren has linked the moments together unbroken in his heart when they were always loose to begin with.  He doesn’t hate Chris for it, he can’t.  Most of the time he thinks Chris doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. Chris is still young and the world moves around him differently than it does Darren, the same way the world asks of Darren different sacrifices.  What they are each willing to give up has never been the same.

 

And suddenly they have no past, not the one Darren thought they were building. Despite himself, despite the coming flood he just wants to go forward to a future he can’t see, but still wants, still thinks is there just beyond his grasping reach.  He’s never been able to tell if Chris really wants the same thing for them, if Chris thinks of them the same way.

 

But the creek is rising and there is only time.

 

***

 

They’re ice-skating and the world is cold and bright, protected somehow despite the cameras and the crowds and the rolling film.  This is the way it was in the beginning, wrapped up in a moment, a day that feels like it goes on forever.  Moments when the only color left in the world is Chris’ eyes and the only sound is his breath.

 

And Darren’s heart feels like the ice they’re on – melting with the heat of Chris near by and freezing when he’s gone.  Back and forth until the cracks cannot be smoothed over any more. He’s waiting for his cue, watching Chris adjust his coat, and he thinks he’s finally starting to understand how easily it might shatter, how every piece of him might finally crumble. But it doesn’t matter. He’s been held together by the tenuous possibility of Chris for too long now.

 

He can’t go back.

 

***

 

It’s a movie premiere and Darren is drawn once again into thinking _okay, this is okay_.  Their lives are confusing and changing, beholden to others and obligations Darren never imagined existing when he started, but it’s going to be okay after all.  He hopes. The night comes so close on the heels of New York that Darren can’t help but think, can’t help but feel like the waters of their lives are finally flowing together instead of merely side by side.

 

Someone once warned him of his open-hearted naivety and of all the things Darren should have paid attention to that’s the one he worries he’ll end up regretting the most when he finally has to answer to the ashen ruins of his life. But Chris parents are there and the backstage is dark and private and Chris draws him so close and Darren thinks again, _we’re okay_.

 

But they’re not.

 

***

 

Darren loses a year to unanswered texts and tense sets, to messages he writes and deletes and pictures he stares at too late into the cold and empty nights. It’s a different kind of storm he’s caught up in now and he can’t escape this one either.  It shouldn’t be like this, it’s not supposed to be like this.  But Chris is again turned off to him as deeply as he was once open; pulled away, shuttered tight behind locks and chains and foggy window frames and Darren can only look.

 

And he in return should close his door to Chris, to turn his back as best he can and make himself move on to something more stable, more safe, but he doesn’t. He can’t.  There are cracks in the walls he struggles to patch up around him and Chris slips through them as easily as water, the way a river will always, eventually find its way home to the sea.

 

But when Chris comes to him with bright eyes and empty hands, all Darren can do is fill them. And it’s not like Chris stops him.

 

***

 

“How does this end?” Darren asks after another night when the world caught him staring.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

The storm rages on quietly and Darren loses track of the time.

 

***

 

It begins when it ends, in a way Darren should have seen coming long before it got to this point.  It’s an exaltation of relief when it comes.  Their rhythm will be a new one, overlaid instead of combative, trusting winds instead of a violent surge.

 

“So how does this end?” Darren asks once again, when the last lines are said and the last deals are over.

 

And Chris finally smiles.  “It doesn’t.”


End file.
